The Book Plank

Elephants and Corpses by Kameron Hurley The corpse-jumping body mercenary Nev is used to filling other people’s shoes. When his assistant Tera recognizes the most recent waterlogged cadaver they bought off the street, though, he finds that his new body is carrying more trouble than he bargained for. I have heard a lot of positive news about Kameron Hurley's writing, her Bel Dame series and the last year released The Mirror Empire have gotten rave reviews. A week ago or so this story was posted on Tor.com and I took to reading it and was hooked. This is a cool story with an awesome concept, it is with such stories that I wish that there were more stories, or that Kameron Hurley writes a full length book with the adventures of Nev and Tera!  The story picks up with Nev and Tera standing and the cities pier where they are bartering to buy a body. Here you learn that Nev is a body merc and that Tera is his body manager, Nev can use dead bodies to jump into and well, yeah liv...

Bill, the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison, Bill the Galactic Hero #1 Bill was a peaceful farm boy until he was lured by the martial music of a passing recruitment sergeant, drugged, and made to enlist in the Empire Space Corps. His basic training is sheer hell, but somehow he manages to stay alive and achieve the rank of Fusetender 6th Class in the process. En route to an engagement with the lizard-like Chingers, Bill's spaceship is involved in a supreme contest and by accident Bill is the man who saves the ship and wins the day. A grateful Galaxy awards him its highest accolade, the Purple Dart, to be presented by the Emperor himself on the fabulous aluminium-covered capital planet, Helior. And then his adventures really start to take off in the most bizarre and nastily surprising ways... Bill, the Galactic Hero popped up in the post rather spontaneously, and say for yourself when you see the cover, don't you want to read it? Pay close attention to the left arm...

Way Down Dark by James Smythe, The Australian Trilogy #1 There's one truth on Australia: You fight or you die. Usually both. Seventeen-year-old Chan's ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. They never found one. The only life that Chan's ever known is one of violence, of fighting. Of trying to survive. But there might be a way to escape. In order to find it, Chan must head way down into the darkness - a place of buried secrets, long-forgotten lies, and the abandoned bodies of the dead. Seventeen-year-old Chan, fiercely independent and self-sufficient, keeps her head down and lives quietly, careful not to draw attention to herself amidst the violence and disorder. Until the day she makes an extraordinary discovery - a way to return the Australia to Earth. But doing so would bring her to the attention of the fanatics and the murderers who control life aboard the ship, putting her and everyone she loves in terrible dang...

The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson In our rapidly changing world of social media, everyday people are more and more able to sort themselves into social groups based on finer and finer criteria. In the near future of Robert Charles Wilson's The Affinities , this process is supercharged by new analytic technologies: genetic, brain-mapping, behavioral. To join one of the twenty-two Affinities is to change one's life. It's like family, and more than family. Your fellow members aren't just like you, and they aren't just people who are likely to like you. They're also the people with whom you can best cooperate in all areas of life, creative, interpersonal, even financial. At loose ends both professional and personal, young Adam Fisk takes the suite of tests to see whether he qualifies for any of the Affinities and finds that he's a match for one of the largest, the one called Tau. It's utopian--at first. His problems resolve themselves as ...

Media Alert: Gollancz Festival is back! Gollancz, the science-fiction and fantasy imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, is delighted to announce a global strategy for The Gollancz Festival 2015 working in conjunction with Waterstones and Future PLC, the publisher of SFX and Total Film magazines and the website GamesRadar+ . The Gollancz Festival 2014 was the first of its kind – an integrated multi-platform, digital and physical one-day book event featuring live participation from almost 50 writers. Even bigger and better, the Gollancz Festival 2015 will showcase more than 70 brilliant authors across 48 hours of action-packed book shop events and creative digital programming. The Gollancz Festival 2015 will take place over Friday 16 October and Saturday 17 October. Due to popular demand, festival events will be held at Waterstones Manchester Deansgate, from 6 – 9pm on Friday 16 October, and at Waterstones Piccadilly, from 2 – 5pm on Saturday 17 October. Each store will ho...

Unseemly Science by Rod Duncan, The Fall of the Gas-lit Empire #2 In the divided land of England, Elizabeth Barnabus has been living a double life - as both herself and as her brother, the private detective. Witnessing the hanging of Alice Carter, the false duchess, Elizabeth resolves to throw the Bullet Catcher’s Handbook into the fire, and forget her past. If only it were that easy! There is a new charitable organisation in town, run by some highly respectable women. But something doesn’t feel right to Elizabeth. Perhaps it is time for her fictional brother to come out of retirement for one last case…? Her unstoppable curiosity leads her to a dark world of body-snatching, unseemly experimentation, politics and scandal. Never was it harder for a woman in a man’s world… Last year saw Rod Duncan's first fantasy novel, The Bullet-Catchers Daughter , after having written four hard crime novels. This was one of my favourite book of 2014 in the Steampunk category. The Bull...

The Myth of Rain by Seanan McGuire [no synopsis availabe] Seanan McGuire is better know to my under her pseudonym Mira Grant, with which she wrote some very creepy horror books. A while ago I read a short story in the Dead Man's Hand anthology about wasps which was part of her InCryptid stories. It was different that what I read in the Mira Grant books, in a very good way. Now when I came across The Myth of Rain I readily jumped the occasion to read it and once again I am amazed.  The story of The Myth of Rain picked up in a way that it readily piques your interstest. It begins with the story of a female spotted owl and how their cry is different. Now from this first sentence the story could go any which way. A documentary of sort. Like Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons. Soon you are introduced to Julie, who is on the look out of owls, observing them and capturing them. For a reason, because at the end of the capture she mentions that monsters are coming to t...

PAN MACMILLAN BUYS NEW TRILOGY IN THE TRADITION OF GEORGE R. R. MARTIN AND DAVID GEMMELL Pan Macmillan is delighted to report the acquisition of a new epic fantasy series by John Gwynne. Senior Commissioning editor Bella Pagan bought World rights from agent John Jarrold, in a six-figure deal. This new standalone trilogy will be set in the same stirring Celtic-inspired world as John’s first quartet, the Faithful and the Fallen. Here, the Banished Lands now seem at peace. However, guardians appointed to enforce it have their own agenda, and mankind will suffer. One central character, Rae, is part-guardian and part-human. And if she can prevail through conflict, crisis and adventure, she may hold the key to humanity’s ultimate freedom. John Gwynne’s debut novel, Malice , won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Debut. And on the new deal, Gwynne said: ‘ I'm absolutely overjoyed that Pan Macmillan will be publishing a new trilogy set in the Banished Land...

A Few Words for the Dead by Guy Adams, The Clown Service #3 While Section 37 Agent Toby Greene's honeymoon takes an unexpected, and potentially deadly turn, back in London Section Chief August Shining has troubles of his own. Dragged in by his fellow agents from M-16, Shining is forced to relive an old mission from the 80's, and pick up where he left off all those years ago to face an old and deadly foe. As Toby and his new wife Tamar dodge an unstoppable killer across Asia and Europe, August must fight, not just for the future of The Clown Service, but for his very existence.  I am a big Guy Adams fan . With his The Clown Service series, he has shown a different side of him. Writing a different genre, supernatural thriller, top secret spy stories. Which all kicked of two books ago in The Clown Service , and continuing in The Rain-Soaked Bride . Even with already having delivered two solid book, don't worry as A Few Words for the Dead continues Guy Adams' wi...

The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate by A.C. Wise, Uncanny Magazine #4 [no synopsis provided] Most of the short stories that I have been reading so far have all been stories. I know quite cryptic and doesn't make much sense but after reading The Practical Witch's Guide to Acquiring Real Estate you will know what I mean. I have been long looking for reading such a thing, not really a story but a story all the same. In The Practical Witch's Guide to Acquiring Real Estate you don't follow a protagonist, it is a story about instructions on how to acquire a new place of living. For witches that is. Now you might wonder what is so special about getting a place to live for witches? Well there are some bits you need to take into account. It starts with the most simple option, that of buying a house, but as we all know most witches don't have the live of riches and they have to result to other ways. Like for starters squatting is an option, but this t...